Category Archives: Economics

Using modern digital archives to look back into our colonial history, Catherine Bishop found that women in early Australia were far more than merely ‘colonial helpmeets’ supporting their settler husbands. Many colonial women in both Australia and New Zealand were engaged in earning a living. Often this involved starting a small business – as a dressmaker or publican, grocer or theatrical entrepreneur – or inheriting an enterprise from a dead husband – such as an ironmongery, butcher’s shop or jewellery business.

FEATURED

Dr Catherine Bishop is a historian who researches Australian, New Zealand and international history, with a particular focus on women. She received a PhD from the Australian National University in 2012 and is now a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Junior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney.

She has published a number of articles and her first book Minding Her Own Business: Colonial Businesswomen in Sydney was published in October 2015. This book was awarded the 2016 Ashurst Business Literature Prize. She has contributed to the Dictionary of Sydney. She was the Australian Religious History Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales in 2016. She was also the recipient of a New Zealand History Trust Award and won the Australian Women’s History Network Mary Bennett prize.

Her research interests include businesswomen in New Zealand and Australia, female missionaries, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women and the Daily Mail and Herald Tribune World Youth Forums of the post World War Two era. She is also interested in heritage, particularly in the way women’s history has been memorialised.

The title was inspired by an article by Leonore Davidoff entitled Regarding Some Old Husbands’ Tales: Public and Private in Feminist History [in Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995].

We’re becoming increasingly fascinated with the super-rich. But how different are the super-rich from us? You might have seen the US television series Secret Lives of the Super Rich? It’s a voyeuristic exploration into the lives of wealthy people; shot against a backdrop of expensive mansions, luxury cars and private jets.

The emergence of new groups of super-rich is not just a local phenomenon. The Canadian online documentary series Ultra Rich Girls features the daughters of super-rich Chinese Canadians who are living in Vancouver. It’s broadcast in Mandarin and English, and it provides a pop-culture snapshot of the changing geopolitics and the global emergence of new groups of super-rich from Asia. But what do we mean we talk about “the super-rich”?

In this episode, Dallas talks to Ray Forrest and Ilan Wiesel about the super-rich in Australia, Asia and beyond. Ilan is interested in wealthy groups in Sydney and Melbourne. He’s been looking at the social and cultural networks that wealthy people create in Australian cities. Drawing on the work of the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu – and two of his ideas in particular: Social Capital and Cultural Capital – he discusses the role elite people and places are playing in the politics of infrastructure provision in Australia.

Ray starts with Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century totake a more global look at the super-rich. He suggests the changing nationalities of the super-rich, and the changing forms and sources of their wealth, are creating new dilemmas for academics. Ray rethinks the super-rich and their wealth, and explores how and why countries like Australia, UK and Canada are making their countries super-rich friendly.

FEATURED

Professor Ray Forrest is Chair Professor of Housing and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. He has worked at the University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Bristol, where he was appointed to a Chair in Urban Studies in 1994. At Bristol he was Head of the School for Policy Studies (2001-2004), Associate Director/Director of the Centre for East Asian Studies (2004-2008) and co-director of the ESRC Centre for Neighbourhood Research (2001-2005).

Dr Ilan Wiesel’s research investigates sustainable housing and urban policy through detailed analysis of the housing experiences, needs and aspirations of diverse social groups. He is also interested in the policies and practices of city builders and policy makers. Before joining University of Melbourne in May 2016 he was as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales (2009-2016).

Factory Farming and Urban Planning: Killing Two Million Birds With One Zone

Dr Liz Taylor

Australians consume over 600 million chickens each year. The vast majority are grown in intensive, vertically integrated factory farming operations called ‘broiler’ farms – some of which house over a million chickens at any one time. While many of us can barely imagine what a million chickens in a shed might look or smell like, peri-urban and rural communities often have firsthand experience. Australians consume a lot of cheap chicken, but planning conflicts show not everyone appreciates an intensive chicken factory as a neighbour. Factory farms are a frequently polarising form of agriculture.In this episode, SoundMinds Radio producer Liz Taylor visits the Victorian town of Castlemaine near a growing cluster of contentious large-scale commercial chicken farms. One recent proposal has seen over two years of planning dispute and may result in Supreme Court action. Liz speak with La Trobe Bendigo researcher Dr Andrew Butt about his research into rural land use planning issues and the pressures of the increasing scale of agricultural systems. Liz also speaks to a local resident who leads a local group concerned about the local impacts intensive farms.

This is a story about how urban planning works in rural areas. As intensive agriculture increases in scale, it causes planning conflicts and places pressures on established practices and regulations. Urban planning comes from an urban tradition, and typically the theories used for thinking about the rural and the urban divide can be quite blunt. ‘Farms’ go in rural zones. But if 21st century farming looks like a million chickens in a shed, a ‘factory’ farm, certainty about what a farm is and where it belongs becomes clouded. Andrew discusses the challenges for planning systems and the risks of trying to close down political discussions about the ethics and impacts of factory farming.FEATURED

Dr Elizabeth Taylor, RMIT University – Producer

Elizabeth is a Vice Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University. Her interests are in policy-focused research across urban planning, housing markets, property rights and locational conflict and her research often makes use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). An increasing research focus is car parking policy. Elizabeth’s publications have explored the housing market implications of urban containment policies; the contested role of research in planning practice; and the ‘Not in My Back Yard’ (NIMBY) phenomenon. The latter includes food, waste and animal-based land uses – like intensive chicken farms – that expose contradictions in the distribution of rights associated with production and consumption.

Dr Andrew Butt, La Trobe University

Dr Andrew Butt is a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University with over 20 years practical experience in planning practice, education and research. He has a strong teaching and research interest in rural landscape change and the interaction of planning systems and agricultural restructuring, particularly in peri-urban areas. His research and practice has involved analysis of farmland change, developing scenarios for land development in rural areas and work on the promotion of local food systems. He has also been involved in policy development and research in the areas of intensive farming and land use conflict with a focus on planning systems and practice.

AUDIO

The Taylor Project: Animals [courtesy of Liz Taylor, used with permission]

‘Poverty porn’ has recently been used to describe television programs that represent the lives of poor people for entertainment purposes, such as Housos (Aus), Struggle Street (Aus) and Benefit Street (UK).

Poverty porn is a term that emerged out of international development studies. It was initially developed to critique the use of media representations that exploit the lives of poor people in order to generate sympathy and donations. More recently it has been used to talk about television programs in Australia and the UK.

The producers of these ‘Poverty porn’ programs claim that by exposing the hardships of poor people, these programs and films might generate sympathy for these communities. Or alternatively, they claim that they are simply showcasing the reliance and resourcefulness of poor people.

SoundMinds Radio Producer Dallas Rogers talks to Associate Professor Deb Warr about the news stories, research and television programs that portray poverty in post-industrial cities. The polarizing debate about poverty porn – which pits exploiting the poor on one side and empowering the poor on the other – doesn’t capture the complex ways in which narratives about poverty and place are created. Dr Warr discusses the intersections between the three key ways in which narratives about poverty and place are created:

Poverty News

Poverty Stories

Poverty Research

FEATURED

Associate Professor Deb Warr is a VicHealth Research Fellow with the McCaughey Centre, at the University of Melbourne. Her work is primarily aimed at understanding socio-economic contexts for health inequalities in developed nations. Dr Warr has published widely and is recognised internationally for work that includes reports of empirical findings and articles exploring theoretical and methodological issues. She has long-standing commitment and expertise in collaborative, participatory and community based research methods and ensuring that the findings of research are accessible for implementation in policy and practice.

FURTHER INFORMATION

DOWNLOAD Dallas article “Poverty Porn and Housing:How we produce Housing and Neighbourhood Stigma” in Housing Works, published by the Australian Housing Institute.

You know what it’s like. You’ve saved for months and queued for hours just to buy the ticket. It’s a big event, a festival, big for you and logistically bigger for the organisers. When the bands are great, or the sport is incredible or the religious experience is humbling, life is good. That’s when festivals go right, but sometimes festivals go wrong. Like the Love Parade in 2010 in Germany; the Cambodian Crush or the Hajj Pilgrimage in 2015 – people die.

To anticipate and prevent such tragedy the Event Manager is part engineer; part psychologist; part sociologist; and a human resources manager capable of micro managing as well as seeing the big picture. And all without the participants knowing it is even happening.

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NEWS

Great to be welcomed to the 5 Minute Research Pitch finals for 2017, hosted by Central Queensland University’s Melbourne Campus. Fourteen talented communicators (representing arts and science academics from 7 participating universities) competed in the ultimate test – pitch your research in 5 minutes, with a 3 slide limit, no going over time. Michael was able to record the entire event and will present the presentations, featuring the two researchers from each of the represented universities.